Studies of the effect of experimental inflammation on rat liver nucleotide sugar pools.

The effect of experimental inflammation on levels of nucleotide sugars was studied in rat liver. There was an increase of about 2-fold in the levels of UDP-N-acetylhexosamines and GDP-Man at 8 and 4 hr after inflammation, respectively. At 48 hr after inflammation GDP-Man had returned close to control values, but UDP-N-acetylhexosamines were still about 50% above controls. There was a 30% reduction in CMP-NeuAc and UDP-Gal at 8-12 hr after inflammation before increasing to slightly above controls at 16-48 hr after inflammation. Inflammation resulted in an increase in activities of glucosamine-6-phosphate synthase and UDP-GlcNAc-2'-epimerase to about twice control activities at 24 and 8 hr after inflammation, respectively, before declining; CMP-NeuAc synthase activities did not show large changes following inflammation.